Air quality on cruise ships ’20 times worse’ than in a busy city centre

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Passengers on a cruise ship could be inhaling “60 times higher concentrations of harmful air pollutants ” than they would in natural air settings, Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU), a German environmental association, has warned.

The air quality on board a cruise ship just after it left Marseille, measured by a journalist for the French documentary television series Thalassa and analysed by NABU, revealed that at peak levels, the concentration of harmful ultra-fine particles was up to 200 times higher than it would be in natural fresh air surroundings and 20 times worse than in the busy city centres of some port cities, including Venice, Marseille, Hamburg and Barcelona, with heavy traffic.

“The longest recording was conducted for a time period of almost 50 minutes where an average of 60,000 particles per cubic centimeter of air were documented. As a comparison: a fresh sea breeze at that altitude should usually be at around 1,000 – 2,000 particles at maximum. So passengers inhaled 60 times higher concentrations of harmful air pollutants,” Daniel Rieger, a transport policy officer and researcher for NABU who analysed the data told Telegraph Travel.

Measurements were taken at various spots on the ship and for this particular sample, the sun deck and jogging lane on the top deck were found to be most affected by pollution. “But of course this can vary along with the wind and weather conditions. So potentially every part of the ship can be affected significantly,”  Mr Rieger said.

For this reason, the German Lung Association and the Pneumologists Association have warned passengers against staying on deck or inhaling ships’ exhaust gases as this could cause acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) if you suffer from lung diseases, Mr Rieger said.

“Moreover they warn that ultra-fine particles are very dangerous, lead to lung diseases, heart attacks, strokes and are also linked to diabetes and cause deterioration for asthma and COPD patients,” he added.

In addition to fine dust and soot from funnels on cruise ships, passengers are exposed to harmful substances such as nitrogen oxides and heavy metals emitted by the combustion of marine diesel fuel and heavy oil. Diesel exhaust has been classified to be just as carcinogenic as asbestos by the World Health Organisation in 2012, and exposure to it increases your risk of getting lung cancer.

“The passengers can only smell or see the particles before they get mixed up with the ambient air,” Mr Rieger told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) following the recent air quality tests.

He warned that the latest results are most likely indicative of the poor air quality on nearly all cruise ships.

“They could have done the air tests on almost any cruise ship in the world while the results would have been the same. This is due to low quality fuels (mainly heavy fuel oil – HFO) and the fact that none of the ships has a particulate filter. And as a consequence air pollutant emissions are massive,” he told Telegraph Travel.

But Helge Grammerstorf, the German national director of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and a former ship captain and ship broker, denied the validity of the measurements, arguing that a more systematic test over a longer period of time is required rather than the recent selective sample of measurements taken.

“We don’t know these measurements. The claim is completely unsubstantiated,” he told Hamburger Abendblatt, a German daily newspaper.

CLIA Europe’s director of public affairs, Martyn Griffiths, agreed, saying: “It is very unfortunate that the actual data of those tests is not available as those small particles can be man-made or natural and for instance will include sea salt when tests are performed at sea.”

“When the actual content of particles is not specified, it is not possible to compare air quality to other cases on land which have very different circumstances and no analysis of their breakdown for comparison,” he added.

The major contributors to poor air quality on board cruise ships are “bad fuel quality and a lack of exhaust gas abatement systems”, Mr Rieger told Telegraph Travel.

It wouldn’t be difficult for cruise ships to help air quality and improvements could be made with “a switch to better fuel, ideally road diesel or liquid natural gas, as well as the compulsory installation of particulate filters and nitrogen catalysts,” he told Telegraph Travel.

But four out of five ships were found to not be equipped with any exhaust gas cleaning systems or only equipped with one that meets the lowest legal standard for northern Europe, which only reduces sulfur oxide emissions, DW reports.

screen-shot-2017-02-03-at-07-58-01

But according to Mr Griffiths, Europe already has 75 cruise ships equipped with emission reducing technologies, including 23 soot particle filters. “Worldwide this amounts to approximately one third of cruise ships. As these types of technologies continue to evolve and improve, we expect these to be fitted on more ships in the future,” he told Telegraph Travel.

“The cruise industry invested $1 billion in new technologies and cleaner fuels to reduce ship air emissions. Billions are being invested in the development of advanced liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fuelled cruise ships that will have lower emissions and higher energy efficiency,” he added.

Currently there are no nitrogen emission control areas  (NECA) in European waters, so vessels only need to comply with the regulations of the sulfur emission control areas (SECA) by using a lower sulphur content diesel and the older vessels are not so clean when it comes to emissions, Ralph Hardwick, a spokesperson from Clean Air London, told Telegraph Travel.

“But even within a sulphur emission control area, the sulphur content should not exceed 0.1 per cent; which is still 100 times the sulphur found in road diesel fuel. Unfortunately no official body is ensuring compliance of this regulation,” he added.

All cruise ships, however, are said to comply with the applicable air emission standards and “regularly go beyond current requirements”, according to Mr Griffiths.

“All ships, including cruise ships regularly undergo inspections by Port State Control of the port visited and inspections by their flag-state. Among the elements inspected are the emission levels of the engines and generators,” he told Telegraph Travel.

Although systems that reduce particle and nitrogen oxide emissions have been available on the market for years, cruise companies have been unwilling to install these mechanisms, which require more expensive types of fuel to operate, the NABU says.

Cruise lines “pay huge sums to improve entertainment and gastronomical services on board, but save as much as they can when it comes to environmental protection,” Leif Miller, NABU manager told DW.

screen-shot-2017-02-03-at-07-59-04

“The question is whether the industry deliberately looks the other way,” Dietmar Oellinger, NABU’s transport expert, told DW.

“We should ask how much more proof the industry needs before they finally take action,” he said.

NABU will be conducting air quality checks on other cruise ships in the future, Mr Rieger added, declining to go into any more detail.

The environmental group has previously measured the concentration of ultra-fine dust particles in the air around cruise ships in the harbours of Hamburg, Venice and the north-eastern German city of Rostock-Warnemünde, but was not allowed to take any measurements on board the cruise ships in those areas, DW reports.

Royal Caribbean, Norwegian Cruise Line, Carnival Cruises and Princess Cruises have yet to respond to Telegraph Travel’s request for a comment on whether cruise ships undergo regular on-board air quality checks, and what measures cruise lines have, or will be taking to improve and protect the air quality on board their ships.

A separate report last year by NABU claimed that European cruise ships are belching out 3,500 times more sulphur dioxide than land-based vehicles, thus contributing to a range of issues including climate change, air pollution and lung problems.

Last December, Princess Cruises, one of 10 brands owned by the world’s largest cruise holiday company, was ordered to pay a $40 million (£32 million) fine for illegally dumping thousands of gallons of oil and waste off the UK coast.

Prosecutors said the payment represents the largest penalty imposed on any firm for deliberate pollution by a ship at sea. Parent company Carnival has also agreed to submit 78 cruise ships across its brands to a five-year environmental compliance programme as part of the plea agreement.

Source: Air quality on cruise ships ’20 times worse’ than in a busy city centre

Posted in Air Quality, Europe, France, Italy, Spain, UK, World News | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Air pollution may lead to dementia in older women 

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Tiny particles that pollute the air — the kind that come mainly from power plants and automobiles — may greatly increase the chance of dementia, including dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease, according to USC-led research.

Scientists and engineers found that older women who live in places with fine particulate matter exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s standard are 81 percent more at risk for global cognitive decline and 92 percent more likely to develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s.

If their findings hold up in the general population, air pollution could be responsible for about 21 percent of dementia cases, according to the study.

“Microscopic particles generated by fossil fuels get into our body directly through the nose into the brain,” said University Professor Caleb Finch at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and co-senior author of the study. “Cells in the brain treat these particles as invaders and react with inflammatory responses, which over the course of time, appear to exacerbate and promote Alzheimer’s disease.

“Although the link between air pollution and Alzheimer’s disease is a new scientific frontier, we now have evidence that air pollution, like tobacco, is dangerous to the aging brain.”

The adverse effects were stronger in women who had the APOE4 gene, a genetic variation that increases the risk for Alzheimer’s.

“Our study — the first of its kind conducted in the U.S. — provides the inaugural scientific evidence of a critical Alzheimer’s risk gene possibly interacting with air particles to accelerate brain aging,” said Jiu-Chiuan Chen, co-senior author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “The experimental data showed that exposure of mice to air particles collected on the edge of USC damaged neurons in the hippocampus, the memory center that is vulnerable to both brain aging and Alzheimer’s disease.”

Their study, published Jan. 31 in the Nature journal Translational Psychiatry, adds to an emerging body of research from around the world that links air pollution to dementia. The offending pollutants — known as PM2.5 — are fine, inhalable particles with diameters 2.5 micrometers or smaller. A human hair is about 70 micrometers in diameter, making it 30 times larger than the largest PM2.5.

The research was a collaboration between USC Davis, the Keck School of Medicine and the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Combining human data and lab experiments

The researchers analyzed data of 3,647 65- to 79-year-old women from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study (WHIMS). These women lived across 48 states and did not have dementia when they enrolled.

The researchers adjusted for potential bias associated with geographic region, race or ethnic background, education, socioeconomic status, lifestyle and medical conditions.

Constantinos Sioutas, the Fred Champion Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at USC Viterbi, invented the technology to collect air particles for controlled exposure of mouse models.

USC scientists chronically exposed female mice carrying the APOE4 gene to nano-sized air pollution for 15 weeks. Compared to the control group, mice predisposed to Alzheimer’s disease accumulated as much as 60 percent more amyloid plaque, the toxic clusters of protein fragments that further the progression of Alzheimer’s.

“Our state-of-the-art aerosol technologies, called particle concentrators, essentially take the air of a typical urban area and convert it to the air of a freeway or a heavily polluted city like Beijing,” said Sioutas, co-author of the study. “We then use these samples to test exposure and assess adverse neuro-developmental or neuro-degenerative health effects.”

Worldwide, nearly 48 million people suffer from dementia, and there are 7.7 million new cases every year, according to the World Health Organization.

“Our study has global implications as pollution knows no borders,” said Finch, holder of the ARCO/William F. Kieschnick Chair in the Neurobiology of Aging.

USC researchers and others in this field said more research is needed to confirm a causal relationship and to understand how air pollution enters and harms the brain. Accurate pollution monitors are important for this task.

Less than one-third of all counties in the United States have ozone or particle pollution monitors, according to the American Lung Association. Ambient monitoring data from the EPA are critical for scientists conducting research on air pollution and public health, Chen said.

“We analyzed data of high PM2.5 levels using standards the EPA set in 2012,” Chen said. “We don’t know whether the lower PM2.5 levels of recent years have provided a safe margin for older Americans, especially those at risk for dementia.”

Six of the top 10 most polluted cities in the nation by PM2.5 are in California, including Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno, according to the American Lung Association.

Yet certain areas have seen cleaner air in recent decades. Reducing PM2.5 in the air we breathe coincides with fewer cases of dementia, the researchers pointed out, referencing the data of others.

The insidious effects of PM2.5

“Many studies have suggested that early life adversities may carry into later life and affect brain aging,” Chen said. “If this is true, then maybe long-term exposure to air pollution that starts a downward spiral of neurodegenerative change in the brain could begin much earlier and rev up in later life.”

In other studies, Chen and his colleagues linked long-term exposure to high PM2.5 levels to smaller gray and white matter volumes in important areas such as the frontal lobe, which carries out thinking, decision-making and planning.

For every 3.5 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic meter of air, white matter (insulated nerve fibers that connect different brain regions) decreased by 6 cubic centimeters, according to one earlier study.

The new study in Translational Psychiatry examined only women and female mice. Future studies will include both sexes to evaluate generalizability to men as well as examine how PM2.5 interacts with cigarettes and other pollutants.

Finch and Chen in 2010 developed the AirPollBrain Network and have recruited 20 USC faculty into this new research area.

The air pollution study, the Women’s Health Initiative and WHIMS are collectively supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health; the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Wyeth Pharmaceuticals Inc.; St. Davids, PA, and the Wake Forest School of Medicine; and the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund.

The nationwide Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study is coordinated by the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina. The WHIMS was begun in 1996 to analyze how postmenopausal hormone treatment affects cognitive impairment and brain aging.

Source: Air pollution may lead to dementia in older women | USC News

Posted in Air Quality, Health Effects of Air Pollution, Medical Studies | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Plan to reduce air pollution chokes in Mexico City: Study finds Saturday driving restrictions fail to improve air quality 

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Decades ago Mexico City’s air pollution was so poor, birds would fall out of the sky — dead. Locals said living there was like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, according to one report. In response, Mexico City took several steps to try to improve air quality including restricting driving one or two days during the weekdays. The program has had negligible results.

In 2008, the city added driving restrictions on Saturdays in hopes of moving the needle but according to new research by Lucas W. Davis, an associate professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, extending the program one more day also isn’t working.

“Saturday driving restrictions are a flawed policy. It’s a big hassle for people and does not improve air quality,” says Davis, who is also the faculty director at the Energy Institute at Haas.

The study, “Saturday Driving Restrictions Fail to Improve Air Quality in Mexico City,” published in Scientific Reports, is the first to examine the effects of restricted driving on Saturdays. It compares pollution levels of eight major pollutants before and after the program went into effect. Having fewer motorists on the road on Saturdays led to close to zero impact. Proponents of the Saturday program had estimated vehicle emissions would be reduced by 15% or more.

Mexico City has the worst air quality in the Western Hemisphere with particulate levels that are three to four times higher than in New York, Los Angeles, São Paulo, or Buenos Aires, the paper states. Mexico City has tried many different approaches to improving air quality, including the city’s well known driving restrictions, which were first introduced in 1989.

The program works like this: restrictions are based on the last number of a vehicle’s license plate. For example, vehicles with license plates ending in “5” or “6” cannot be used on Mondays. The ban is in effect from 5:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. for both personal and commercial vehicles.

To determine the impact of Saturday restrictions, Davis analyzed hourly air pollution data from 29 monitoring stations around Mexico City from 2005 to 2012. He studied emission levels for carbon monoxide; nitric oxide; nitrogen dioxide; nitrogen oxide; ozone; large particulates; small particulates; and sulfur dioxide. None of these pollutants decreased as a result of Saturday driving restrictions.

Trying to figure out why pollution did not decrease, Davis next examined ridership data from Mexico City’s public transportation systems. From city buses, to light rail, to electric buses, he found no discernible increase in Saturday riders.

“People have found other ways to get around the driving restrictions,” says Davis. “Some purchase multiple cars, others take taxis or Uber.”

Davis argues that as Uber and other taxi-like services become increasingly available, driving restriction policies will continue to struggle to improve air quality. Instead, he suggests that Mexico City and other cities plagued by dangerous pollution need to require stricter vehicle emission tests.

“Test every car, test every year. If you have a car that’s polluting the air, you can’t drive it. Period,” says Davis.

Source: Plan to reduce air pollution chokes in Mexico City: Study finds Saturday driving restrictions fail to improve air quality — ScienceDaily

Posted in Latin America, Mexico | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Poland to curb imports of low-quality coal to fight air pollution 

Posted on February 2, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Poland plans to curb imports of unsorted coal to improve the material its citizens use to warm their homes during winter and improve air quality in heavily polluted cities, the energy ministry said late on Wednesday.

Cities such as fast-modernizing Warsaw, industrial Katowice and medieval Krakow are among the most polluted in Europe, mostly from airborne dust particles.

Poland produces most of its electricity from highly-polluting coal in outdated power plants, while Poles use low-quality material to fire stoves to warm their homes in winter.

The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party promotes coal as the basic source of energy and has taken actions to boost demand for coal, which it has in excess, to help its troubled mining firms.

However, the energy ministry plans to implement number of regulations aimed at cutting pollution, including monitoring of the quality of solid fuel, which would hit Russian coal imports at a time of deteriorating relations with Poland’s former Soviet overlord.

“Importers will be forced to allow imports to Poland only of sorted coal. According to energy ministry data, until November 2016 Poland imported 7.2 million tonnes of coal. The biggest chunk, 4.61 million tonnes, came from Russian Federation,” the ministry said in a statement.

Sorted coal is a coal controlled for size, without small, pollution-creating particles.

Poland produced about 70 million tonnes of coal last year.

Source: Poland to curb imports of low-quality coal to fight air pollution | Reuters

Posted in Europe, Poland | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Smog levels way above safe limits in northern Italy

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd
“Italian cities need to breathe again,” the country’s environmental organization, Legambiente, warned on Monday, as it reported that the first month of 2017 has seen nine Italian towns pass safe limits for air pollution on at least half of the days.

The news came as several northern cities imposed traffic blocks in an effort to combat air pollution. The environmental councillor in Pavia, a university town in Lombardy, advised residents to stay indoors as much as possible and avoid using cars.

In Turin and Rome, where safe limits for fine particles have been exceeded for several consecutive days, authorities have imposed traffic blocks on the most polluting vehicles.

In the capital, the most polluted areas included Via Tiburtina and Via Praenestina – both narrow streets lined by tall buildings – and the busy Corso Francia.

But the Villa Ada park, the city’s second largest green space, also showed worrying levels of fine particles. According to Legambiente’s regional president, Roberto Scacchi, the fact that smog had reached even open spaces showed “the situation is serious, and the smog is everywhere”.

In Rome, cars account for 70 percent of the smog, while only 30 percent of the problem is down to heating or heavy industry. Traffic blocks, applying to scooters and motorbikes as well as cars, were in place from Wednesday, affecting the most polluting vehicles (if you’re in Rome, check the city hall’s website for the latest restrictions).

Scacchi argued that the restrictions should be more extensive, however, and called for more traffic lanes and improvements to be made to improve public transport in order to tackle the pollution problem long-term.

The smog is worsened by the fact that northern Italy hasn’t seen any significant rainfall in over two months, and while meteorogists have forecast rain by the middle of the week, which should provide temporary relief, Scacchi said more permanent measures were needed. “You can’t just do a rain dance, waiting for it to come and wash away pollution,” he warned.

On a national level, the most polluted town of 2017 so far is Cremona in Lombardy, where safe limits for fine particles have been surpassed for 20 days already this year. Turin follows with 19 days over the pollution limit, then Frosinone in Lazio at 18, and Padua, Vicenza and Reggio Emilia had all passed the limit of 15 days.

“The data doesn’t bode well,” said the Legambiente Mal’aria (Bad air) report, which was published on Monday.

Environmental activists presented the report at the regional offices of Emilia Romagna, along with the association’s proposals to combat smog. Some carried banners reading ‘Our lungs are breaking! No to smog’.

The dossier is a follow-up to a 2016 study, which showed that 33 Italian towns had gone over the annual limits of Pm10, with Turin, Frosinone, Milan and Venice the worst offenders.

“The air quality in Italian towns needs to become a government priority, on a local, regional and national level,” warned Legambiente’s national president, Rossella Muroni. “Otherwise we will continue to condemn Italian citizens to breathe in polluted air.”

Among the suggestions put forward by Legambiente were ideas for redesign of roads and public spaces, upgrades to public transport and more green areas in the city.

According to the latest estimates, air pollution causes more than 467,000 deaths in Europe each year, with the associated health costs amounting to between €400 billion and €900 billion annually.

Source: Smog levels way above safe limits in northern Italy – The Local

Posted in Air Quality, Europe, Italy | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salt Lake City currently has worst air quality in US

Posted on February 1, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

SALT LAKE CITY – Salt Lake City currently has the worst air quality in the country, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov.Salt Lake City is followed by Franklin, Idaho, and then Napa, California, when it comes to poor air Tuesday.The forecast shows no improvement Wednesday, likely earning SLC the title of worst air in the US for the second day in a row.

Northern Utah may not be breathing better air until the end of the week when the next storm is expected.

Source: Salt Lake City currently has worst air quality in US | fox13now.com

Posted in Air Quality, USA & Canada | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Stockholm registers air pollution ‘as bad as Beijing’ 

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd
Sweden may be a nation with a reputation for its green credentials, but the country’s capital city recently registered air quality as poor as Chinese capital Beijing.

That’s according to Stockholm Air & Noise Analysis (SLB-analys), the authority responsible for monitoring air quality in the city, which observed particularly dirty air at their Hornsgatan and Häggvik stations in the capital last Sunday.

“The inward movement of dirty air from central Europe caused very high levels of particles in Stockholm’s air on Sunday. The situation worsened further because of the weather,” Malin Täppefur from SLB-analys told The Local.

“The high concentration occurred for around eight hours and was as high as in Beijing. The difference between Beijing and Stockholm however is significant. Beijing has very high levels for long periods. In Stockholm it’s extremely unusual, and it doesn’t even occur annually,” she added.

The dangerous microscopic particles in the air can be caused by wear and tear on road surfaces, tyres and vehicle brakes, but above all weather conditions were to blame. A relatively low level of precipitation in the city meant that cars with winter tyres swirled the dust up from the road and into the air, creating a high level of particles.

“The weather conditions hampered the dilution and purging of the pollution. There were very high levels,” Täppefur noted.

According to the expert, there is little the city could have done to prevent the unusually smoggy day, and instead, other neighbouring countries with high levels of pollution were the source.

Source: Stockholm registers air pollution ‘as bad as Beijing’ – The Local

Posted in Air Quality, Europe | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Air Quality Levels In Gurugram Plunge To ‘Poor’ Levels Again After Relief From A Few Rainy Days 

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Respro® UK Ltd

Central Pollution Control also declared it as the second-most polluted city in India.

CPCB made this announcement on Sunday and Gaya was the most polluted city in the country for the day.

The city’s air quality index (AQI) was reported to be ‘poor’ at 247, around 31% higher than Delhi’s ‘Moderate’ AQI of 188. Going by the weather forecast, the situation is likely to get worse in the coming days of the week.

The minimum temperature on Sunday remained 9 degrese Celsius while the maximum temperature was 21 degrees Celsius. “While the maximum temperature is expected to go up to 25°C from the current 20-21°C, we’re expecting more cloudy and foggy days this week. There is no further forecast of rain either,” said a Met official.

The city recorded the highest concentration of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 at 109.56g/m³ on Sunday, up from nearly 50g/m³ on Thursday and Friday. According to WHO, 60g/m³ is the safe level for PM2.5.

Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) blamed the city’s proximity to multiple national and state highways for the poor air quality. “In the NCR region, Gurgaon is perhaps the only city which is situated near a national highway — NH-8, as well as many state highways. The huge rush of heavy vehicles makes the city more polluted. Besides, diesel autos are a major source of air pollution. I don’t see any other factor here for making the city’s air quality worse than that of Delhi,” said an official of HSPCB.

Experts said rise in fog would add to the pollution in the days to come. “Increase in fog means particulate matter will remain trapped in the lower atmosphere, leading to a rise in air pollution. If there is prediction of foggy days ahead, air pollution is definitely going to go up,” said Sudhir Pandey, a former professor of environmental sciences at Delhi University.

Originally Published in the Times Of India

Source: Air Quality Levels In Gurugram Plunge To ‘Poor’ Levels Again After Relief From A Few Rainy Days – Indiatimes.com

Posted in Air Quality, Asia, India | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment